Something that's shockingly easy to miss if you grew up in a context where the term for "tabletop roleplaying game" was "D&D":

Dungeons and Dragons is actually a fairly specific system aiming to create a particular kind of game.

Yes, DMs and players have a titanic amount of influence over what the game feels like - the campaigns I've been in have included "travel from adventure to adventure", "periodically get the team together to solve a problem through puzzle-solving and moxie", "fantasy XCOM in Greyhawk-esque colonialist Appalachians", "fantasy post-apoc Earth with pop culture jokes" (my character in that one is a sorcerer who channels her power through the ancient picture-characters known as Emoji)...

...but D&D assumes:

- Combat is a big part of the story and character builds.- The capabilities of characters ramps up from "similarly competent to mundane humans" to, at /minimum/, "kick 80-foot-tall giants in the knee and trip them".- Commoners are almost powerless against any adventurers above a very low level.- The DM has full control over the diegetic universe and the limits of what players are allowed to attempt to do.- Challenges should be frequently resolved by random chance.- The pivotal events of the world happen at the scale of a dozen people or so at a time.- The game follows the characters from past into future.- The progression of the characters' arcs should definitely include gaining wealth, both in specie and in rare items.- There are cosmic forces acting on ideological motives trying to change the world to conform specifically to their image of it.

And yes, there are ways to work around those things ... but the game assumes these things.

It's not a generic system. I haven't even touched on all the ways it's not a generic system. It's something specific with advantages and disadvantages.

And so it doesn't need to be anyone's default. It can just be an option. And people can prefer other options.

Lv3 Game DesignerHe/HimI create D&D content, I publish RPGs, and I talk about nerdy stuff.

Zero tolerance for Nazis.

Joined Aug 2018

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